Day 3 - Beginnings

Our day began with retired journalist Peter Jacobi. He inspired us with music from Chopin (reminding us to play music in our classrooms) and through readings of great prose. He taught us to write something readers remember using the flesh, mind, and spirit. He taught us to flesh out our writing with focus, language, emphasis, substance, and honesty. He told us to put our minds to meaning, intelligence, nuance, and direction. And finally we learned that the spirit of writing comes in song, personality, imagination, resonance & relevance, inspiration, and transparency. We hope to find a way to transfer what we learn here this week into our writing and into our teaching.

In a session on tension and conflict we picked up a few ideas to take back to our young writers. We will use a rubberband to demonstrate the narrative structure as it pulls, comes down, twists, and goes again. This is a lesson in the writing process that clarifies that the writer is the director. We like concrete examples to show kids how writers work. We picked up a few notions about using short sentences to build tension and some examples from children's literature to share with our students.

We learned about point of view today as well from author Sandy Ascher. One activity we gleamed from this session is to give students different points of view the same window. Sandy wrote a fabulous resource for writers that is applicable to writing teachers. It's called Writing it Write! We are so excited about this book (we were given copies). It has examples of real drafts and final copies along with revision notes of children's writing. This is a great book to show kids how to revise. We can't wait to use it in the classroom.

In a session on historical fiction and history we learned about the importance of research, and the powerof story telling in nonfiction. We are just now scratching the surface after our own discussions with our mentors over our writing. Never before did we see nonfiction as a dramatic story with a plot, setting, and characters. This is a new way of thinking for us and one that will apply to teaching nonfiction and research writing next year.

Our heads are full and our bodies are tired. We stayed up late revising our own writing after conferences with our mentors. We look forward to another day after a good night's sleep.